Lainie Storms In

She's Not So Bad...

When Annie came home, and the two brothers left to live with a relative, she became quite close to Hank. She was teaching him so much, he was starting to talk, and he began walking. It's amazing what older siblings can do to help teach their younger brothers and sisters. Just playing with him, she gave him so much. And she loved playing with him! If you've never heard the sound of children laughing hysterically and spontaneously in your house, you're missing out!

Hank was making so much progress, and we were all becoming so attached to him. It looked like that case was headed to termination, and then we got that call. They'd been to court, and to every one's amazement, the judge was sending Hank home to his parents. I was devastated, I was losing another baby! I called the Regional Director at Health and Welfare and cried on her shoulder. I just didn't understand how they could send him home when the parents hadn't done anything to get him back! She had sympathy, but there was nothing she could do. In the end, all decisions are made by the judges, and this judge went against the recommendations of the department. She gave me the number of another foster parent who only took babies, so she had a lot of experience letting babies go, and might be able to help me. I never did call her, and maybe I should have, just to have that connection, that support. Instead, I internalized, and started developing my own way of getting through the letting go phase...ask for more kids!

So I got Lainie. She was 13, and a troubled girl. They told me I could expect trouble from her, and that she was a poor student, and that they hoped it would work out in our home, but nobody expected it to. Wow, what a way to meet someone, having all those preconceived notions...and this was the first of many who would come to me this way, with me expecting the worst. I don't know if that's good or bad.

When I was in college, one of my professors often quoted one study they'd done with teachers. They took a 40 kids who were all at the same level academically, and behaviorally, and split them in two groups. They told teacher A she was getting a class of high achievers, good kids. They told teacher B she was getting low achievers with behavior problems. Teacher A tried new teaching strategies, and challenging lessons in her class, and concentrated very little on classroom management, assuming she would have no problems anyway. Teacher B focused on classroom management and social skills and kept to the outlined curriculum for the class. In the end, teacher A's student excelled, and teacher B's students performed lower than normal. The point of this was that people perform to your expectations. So is this any way to bring a new child into your home? I don't have an answer. On the one hand, you do need to know their behavior history so you won't be blind-sided if they continue that behavior in your home. On the other hand, the kids do perform, quite often, to our expectations. Like with the twins...we didn't know they were still strictly on a bottle, we assumed at their age they'd be on solids and using a cup, so that's what we gave them, and they began to thrive.

Back to Lainie...we'd never been given a kid and told to expect trouble, so we treated her like any other kid in our home. All the same rules applied. She wasn't being watched closer than the others, she was expected to do her best in school, and she was expected to participate in the family. Her first week there, she told us she hated little kids, but she still played with Barbie dolls, and she had an excuse every night for not being able to help clean up the kitchen.

Well, we just let the "I hate little kids" thing drift off in the air with no response. It didn't take long before she was playing Barbies with Annie. In fact, she got quite close to Annie, and protective of her. With the cleaning thing, we let her get away with it the first night, but the second time she did it, I just kind of shrugged and said, "that's OK, the bathroom is close to the kitchen if you need to vomit. You were well enough to eat, so you should be well enough to put the dishes in the dish washer and wipe the counters." She tried a few more times with the same response, then gave up and did her job with no complaints.

Right after she'd moved in, we sat down and had a family meeting of sorts, and went over the house rules. The other girls helped, and so it was more of a discussion about expectations than anything. The girls actually did most of the talking. They were the ones who stressed to her that school was a big thing. They knew we expected them to try hard, do their best, and ask for help when they needed it, and if they didn't do those things and came home with bad grades, they lost privileges. One of those was the TV in their room that they all shared. So they were good at helping each other out during homework hour every day, and keeping their grades up to the best of their ability so they wouldn't lose their TV. (It only had an antennae on it, so it's not like they'd lose much, but it was important to them.) So what do you think Lainie did? She got straight A's. Everyone who'd known her before was shocked. We didn't even do anything, she was just naturally good in school, never asked for help, and did quite well. You know, two years later when she moved to an adoptive family, they asked her what made the change in her academics, and she told them it was simply that suddenly people believed in her.

After that, I became even more conscious of how we treated kids when they came, and tried to make sure we always kept our expectations high and positive rather than sitting around waiting for them to display whatever bad behavior we were told they'd have. Most of the time, this works.

Tune in again to read tales about the adventures from the Angel Retreat.

Donations to fund the needs and activities for the angels who live with us are always welcome.